We Are For Each Other
by inkvoices
Summary: Kindness will kill her, but Amy can't help looking for company.


Author Note: **SPOILERS** for Dr Who 6.10 _The Girl Who Waited_. So if you haven't seen it don't read this :)

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><p><span>We Are For Each Other<span>

"I told you, I'm not going to stay stuck inside just 'cause of you lot."

Amy pulled the last of the barbs from inside the handbot's headpiece.

"But did you listen?"

She placed a hand on either side of its head and pushed, forcing the sliding parts together until the headpiece closed.

"You just talk and talk. And I wouldn't mind, but it's the same old thing. 'This is a kindness'. Blah, blah, blah."

The handbot looked rather battered now that she'd finished with it. There were dints where she'd hit it to disable it, the metal was scored where she'd broken through to the inner components to remove anything that could harm her, and the arms that ended in dangling wires at the wrists were pitiful.

"The only thing that listens around here is the interface, and you," said Amy raising her voice to a shout, "don't activate down here, do you?"

She leaned back, away from the handbot, until she was kneeling on the floor instead of crouched over the thing.

"That's the problem with staying where it's safe," she told it. "It's lonely."

Now that she'd gotten the hang of getting answers out of the interface she could almost have a conversation of sorts with it, but the interface wasn't available inside the temporal engine room and that was the only area where she didn't have to worry about death by handbot.

It seemed sensible to wait there to be saved. No, she _knew_ it was sensible, but she had a lot of time on her hands and it was difficult to be sensible for all of it.

Outside of the engine room there were gardens and theme parks and places to explore. There were clothes shops and restaurants, although she never felt like she had to eat, and sports facilities like the one where she'd acquired a sword. The facility had been designed for someone to spend a lifetime in and never be bored.

Plus the interface was out there. Now they had almost conversations and eventually she was determined to make it tell her everything and anything that she asked of it.

When she wasn't being sensible and staying put.

"You can move now," said Amy, shifting until she was sat cross-legged. "Do something. Say something. If you can. Can you?"

The handbot did nothing.

"Oh no you don't. I put a lot of effort into you and I know you're functioning perfectly fine so you can just bloody well do something! Now!"

Amy brought the flat of her hand down hard on top of the thing's chest. It made her palm sting, but there was no reaction from the handbot.

"Damn you," she said quietly.

She hit it again, harder, and again. She got back up onto her knees and pummeled it. She hit it with everything she had and pretended that it didn't hurt, that nothing hurt and the dampness on her face was just sweat.

She hadn't cried in years.

One of her blows slid off the main body and she caught the side of her hand on the sharp edge of the handbot's left wrist. She jerked backwards and stared at the tiny beads of blood welling up. Her alien blood. Then she shook her head and went to find something to fix herself up with.

"Stupid," she said to herself, wrapping the hand with a strip left over from her old, long worn-out blouse. "Stupid, stupid little girl. Amy Pond still waiting to be saved. Grow up and face reality. You're on your own."

There was a whirring noise behind her and Amy spun around, grabbing her sword with her good hand and the metal pipe she used as a secondary weapon with her damaged one.

The handbot was on its feet pointing its wrists, its useless wrists, around the room trying to see.

"Right. Now you listen to me. I know you can hear me. Your hands are your eyes, not your ears, so listen up and listen good."

Amy tightened her hold on her sword and raised it a little higher as the handbot started running a diagnostic on itself, opening and closing the myriad interconnecting parts of its chassis.

"You can't do anything to me. I've taken away all of your medicines and your little tools. I've even taken away your hands. You can't give me kindness, and you know what? I don't want it."

The handbot stopped moving, its wrists outstretched towards her.

"That's right. I don't want your kindness."

Amy lowered her weapons slowly as the handbot lowered its wrists.

"You're programmed to help people though and I haven't taken that away. I haven't taken it away because I'm not like that, I wouldn't do that, and... I do want your help."

The handbot tilted its head to one side and, in the shadowy den Amy had made in the temporal engine room, for one small moment it looked almost human.

"Look, I'm going stir-crazy in here," she said quietly. "I could use a bit of company."

It came towards her and she stayed still, because however much she ordered herself to be sensible she couldn't help but hold onto hope.

The handbot raised a wrist up to Amy's damaged hand where the cloth she'd wrapped around it had come loose. It used a protrusion of metal from its wrist to lift the end and wrap it around again.

"Right." Amy released the metal pipe, letting it fall to the floor. "Thanks."

The handbot took a step back and stood still, its feet a shoulder-width apart and its arms by its sides.

"Could you hear that?" Amy asked, sliding her sword back into the scabbard on her back. "Material coming loose metres away from you? You heard that and exactly where it was?"

The handbot didn't respond.

"Okay, so no on the verbal then. At least I don't need to worry about you not being able to see if you can hear that well. Not that you're to go running off anywhere, understand? We're meant to stay here, where it's safe."

Amy sat down and leant back again the wall of one engine unit, adjusting her scabbard.

"Well sit down then. Get comfy. This is home."

The handbot obeyed, or at least it arranged herself next to her in a seated position. She had no idea if a robot could ever be comfortable.

"You're going to need a face," she told it. "I mean, I know you've got no eyes and apparently I'm not going to get any words out of you, but you've got a head so it needs a face. Eyes and a mouth, and we'll add a nose too while we're at it. I know that might not be what your people are like, but I'm human. We humanise things."

"Speaking of," she continued, patting it on the knee, "you'll need a name as well, but we'll give you a face first."

The handbot moved its leg closer to Amy so that its knee was easier to reach.


End file.
